Every year in Italy, hundreds of illegal dumping activities are detected but it is
believed that there could be up to 10 times more, where the majority go
undetected and are never penalized. New administrative measures against illegal
dumping need to be developed that involve patrolling for illegal dump sites and
dumping activities, and developing new databases for documenting their
existence. This paper introduces an aerospace-based support system to fight
illegal dumping and to help local governments to study their environmental
impact, mapping the results of the investigations as well as collecting site
specific information. Currently a wide variety of aerospace platforms (satellites,
aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial systems, etc.) are available to monitor
environmental problems, but their real effectiveness is often limited due to the
capability of the on-board sensors. The availability of a high altitude viewing
platform provides broad coverage, but often the technical limitations of the
sensors require a mission profile close to the target to acquire high resolution
data. Currently, the Italian Aerospace Research Center is developing a system,
entitled \“Aerospace Interoperability Framework”, that provides a complete
framework composed of flight and ground segments, communication links,
acquisition sensors, mission paradigm logic and scheduling, data acquisition
paradigm and logic, and data processing. A detailed overview of this aerospace-